Katrin von Lehmann

World Citizen 1735 – 1990

In 2012/2013 I was Artist in Residence of the research group ‘Eine Wissensgeschichte der menschlichen Vielfalt im 20. Jahrhundert’ (A History of the Science of Human Diversity in the 20th Century) at the Max Planck Institute for Scientific History, Berlin.

Veronika Lipphardt and her research team set up a database of historical documents at the institute, investigating human diversity and therefore historical racial theories as well. For example, it contains tables of blood groups, skull measurements, family trees, images of eyes, ears, hair, and maps with language allocations.

The concept of my work:I imagine that if every single document reflects a partial aspect of human diversity, then by means of an artistic process, i.e. the weaving of photos – with deconstruction and construction – I could create a kind of prototype of man, which I call World Citizen. The dates in the titles of the works refer to the oldest and most recent documents in the database I use.